January 22, 2009

1. Kate Winslet's performance in "The Reader" is classified as a "leading role," and it is her only nomination. She won Golden Globes for "leading" in "Revolutionary Road" and for "supporting" in "The Reader." The Academy is not buying that, and I'd say rightly so. It's a leading role in "The Reader," and I'm tired of big stars getting their roles categorized as supporting to horn in on the lesser actors with smaller parts.

2. "Revolutionary Road" generally seems snubbed. Leonardo DiCaprio didn't get a nomination. (Though Michael Shannon got a supporting nomination.) And there is no Best Picture or Director nomination.

3. I've seen 4 of the Best Picture nominees: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Milk," "The Reader," and "Slumdog Millionaire." I haven't seen "Frost/Nixon," and frankly, I don't want to. I can see in the trailer the way Nixon's own words have been edited and ham-acted into something they were not. I'd give the Oscar to "Slumdog Millionaire." "Milk" would be fine too.

4. Richard Jenkins in "The Visitor"? I know nothing about that one. I guess he must have been good. I'll try to check it out before saying I think Sean Penn or Mickey Rourke should win Best Actor. I think Rourke will win because he suffered so much making that movie.

5. Melissa Leo in "Frozen River"? Again, I know nothing about that one. And I haven't seen Angelina Jolie in "The Changeling." (Oddly, I've never seen Angelina Jolie in anything! I guess I just done share her taste in films.) I guess the plan is to give Best Actress to Kate Winslet. Wonder if there will be a backlash.

6. I've seen all the Supporting Actress films. Personally, I love Penélope Cruz. What an amusing performance!

7. I've seen 3 of the Supporting Actor films. I love Robert Downey Jr., but I haven't seen "Tropic Thunder." (I will.) I saw "Iron Man." And I haven't seen "Revolutionary Road" yet, because it hasn't hit town. I've seen "Milk," "Doubt," and "The Dark Knight," and if it were between those 3, I'd pick Josh Brolin in "Milk." That was one of the most effective performances I've ever seen. And I went into the film not knowing he'd been singled out as especially good, so, for me, he came out of nowhere and killed.

8. I see both Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt got nominated. Congratulations to the happy couple. Life's not fair, but they seem to be decent people making good decisions. No need to hate them.

71 comments:

Oh yeah, I forgot, Benjamin Button gets 13? What planet are these people from? It is a direct ripoff of Forest Gump (although to be fair I think it is the same writer so I guess he can't rip himself off).

Sean Penn will win for Milk in this, the year Prop 8 passed.Similarly, Josh Brolin could win because he is so great in Milk and he played the buffoonish "W". That's a winning resume in Hollywood.However, Heath Ledger will probably win that category.

The trailers for Benjamin Buttons (how I loath that name) make it look like over-produced, over-written, over-sentimentalized, over (to keep with the theme) manipulative pap, designed from the first inkblot on the page to compete for Oscars. It looked dreadful. Is there anyone who has seen it that might defend it? I'll keep an open mind. Sometimes trailers actually work against good films.

I'm a little surprised Valkyrie got no nominations, not even in the second tier categories like sound-editing and visual effects. Getting bumped out by Wanted has to hurt. I'm not complaining; Valkyrie was another of those films that I wouldn't watch on video, much less pay to see at the theater.

It's a pretty good movie, lots of funny bits (I mean that literally, too). It's a slapstick movie, for the most part, but Downey's role when playing against Brandon Jackson's character of Alpa Chino is...sublime.

1. yes, the lead actress as supporting actress thing is cynical. (it goes both ways...like resse witherspoon's supporting actress as lead win). i was afraid that a nom in supporting actress will lead her to steal the award from penelope.

3. millionaire vs. button....young love vs. old/young-young/old love.(the oscar also went for the old/young love in the reader).

4. jenkins and pitt...both very quiet roles. i guess the academy had a taste for that this year.

6. yes.

7. shannon was the only thing i really cared for in rev road. if you have been watching mad men, there's no need to see this movie. you get more bang for 1 hour in front of the tube.

Re: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: Life's not fair, but they seem to be decent people making good decisions. No need to hate them.

A brother worked on a film Pitt starred in that is still in editing. He said that Brad seemed like a nice guy. When he first showed up at the shooting site (it was all on location in a small town), he walked around and introduced himself ("Hi, I'm Brad.") and shook hands with all the crew. Later that day, my brother was finishing the A/V set up of Brad's green room in a house across the street from where they were filming and Brad came in and talked sports and video games with the crew there. Angelina visited the sets and was said to be quite friendly.

There are a lot of stars at that level that want nothing to do with the crew, so kudos to him.

Rob Downey for Tropic Thunder?? Look, I love the guy, and I don't mind him getting noms for good roles. The problem is, while funny, this ain't one of those "good" roles. Attaching "Academy Award" to "Tropic Thunder" is sort of like attaching "Gourmet" to "Chef Boyardee". It's a mismatch. Tropic Thunder is a lot of things - funny, gross, entertaining at points - but quality it ain't, and nominating Downey for this role when better performances have come in the past is mystifying.

Look, the Kirk Lazarus character was funny as hell and was one of the best things about the movie. But I simply can't see the performance as being Oscar worthy.

Must disagree with the other assessments of Tropic Thunder here. That movie was bad overall, with a couple of funny bits. I was really looking forward to it and expected much more. I usually like movies in this vein, but this one sucked. Not worth the 6 bucks to rent it.Robert Downey Jr. was OK in it, I guess. I actually liked Tom Cruise the best. That character was funnier than all the others put together.

I loved Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder, and I can understand the concept behind the nomination. He was an actor [i]playing[/i] an actor [i]playing[/i] a character, and with a dialogue that allowed him to move between the layers of that role at the same time. Although I expect some additional backlash over the 'Simple Jack' discussion (which was ironically centered around winning acting awards)....the award has had Heath Ledger's name engraved on it since he passed away.

As a big fan of comedy, this is the first nomination for one of the 'big 4' acting awards that I can think of which went to a comedic performance....and I'm thrilled about that.

Somewhat surprised that 'Dark Knight' didn't get a best picture nomination, but I thought that the plot was a bit muddled, and I didn't like it as much as most people. (I preferred Iron Man, honestly.)

Lead actress is the award in which the stars seem most aligned: Streep (could win for just about any role she plays), Hathaway (the rising star), Winslett (somewhere between the two above), Jolie (the most commercially bankable of the group), and the unknown choice in Melissa Leo.

Doubt, Frost/Nixon, and Milk are all films that I feel like I should see for the performances....yet find myself repelled by the subject-matters of each (and the agendas I suspect underly the films).

And, what's the criteria for a best animated movie nomination? Were there only 3 animated movies released all year, or is something like Madagascar 2' or 'Horton Hears a Who' just not sufficiently Oscar-worthy?

Benjamin Button has 13 nominations? I share the Gump-reaction for the most part, but it sure would be cool to see a film shot in New Orleans, using my university's film production and post-production studios, and with our film students working on the crew, win some Oscars. Oh, wait, that's already happened (Ray: 2004). But a repeat is always welcome.

Exactly. It was an oddball film, in that the whole film worked, but the individual acting performances were mediocre.

Dev Patel was totally miscast as the older Jamal. He was born in Harrow, for chrissakes, and has the brittle polish of someone raised in a developed country, not the hard-scrabble cheekiness of one from the Third World.

If you guys haven't done so already, please keep a look out for two Indian movies of last year.

Because I lived in the Third World for a lot of my youth, the backstory of Slumdog didn't make as big an impression as it did with others. What Jamal went through, no I didn't go through, but I saw every day, a dozen times per day.

I'd grouse about some of these picks, but then I remember, I don't care who picks up those little statuettes.

I think they screwed up on the cinematography picks, though. Of the big effects movies this year (Hellboy II, Narnia, Iron Man, Hulk, Dark Knight, Indy), Dark Knight was the worst shot of the lot, yet it's the only one from that bunch that picks up a nomination.

Also, the various Apatow comedies are usually pretty gorgeous to look at, and if you were to judge films solely on their cinematography, both Pineapple Express and Forgetting Sarah Marshall could easily have jumped ahead of a couple of the nominated pictures. Slumdog was the only nominee that belongs, from the pictures I've seen.

When it comes to camera work, framing, and lighting, and all the other elements that make up cinematography, the movie from 2008 that really stands out (in my opinion) is WALL*E. That film is gorgeous and really used all the elements of cinematography amazingly well. So it was all generated in a computer, what should matter is what's on screen, and what's on screen is a beautifully shot film.

I can't believe I haven't seen The Reader. Kate was outstanding in Rev Road, so she must have been even better in The Reader.

No, she wasn't. She had a dour complexity in The Reader, but with none of the depth of Revolutionary Road.

Of course, RR's greatest strength is that it is an adaptation of a very well-known novel, written a few years after the actual decade it portrays, so it has little of the hackneyed "American Beauty"/"Little Children" view of the 'burbs. I am really surprised that it got blanked in the Oscars. The Academy tend to honour Holocaust movies, and I'm guessing even they realised "Defiance" was too shallow.

A comment about the dogs that didn't bark. In terms of dramatic confrontation, Hiss/Nixon beats anything in Frost/Nixon. Don't hold your breath waiting for a dramatization of that....Hiss went to his death never doubting the rightness of his cause, and his supporters never doubted the glibness of his lies. There is great drama in Hiss's contradictions and postures and many edifying lessons for the audience to learn. No dramatist will ever write it; no actor will ever bring it to life. Instead we learn for the thousandth time what an infinitely despicable human being Nixon was and how worthy the media were for revealing his flaws.

So I guess the most "soft serve" of the nominated pictures would have to be Slumdog Millionaires, especially considering the 'autograph' scene.

I think that's the scene which propelled Slumdog into something otherworldly for most Westerners. They had never seen, or imagined such a scene possible.

Consider me, then, in Rio de Janeiro. It was the first day after our arrival, and my mother and I decided to take a walk along our new neighbourhood -- the legendary Copacabana.

We noticed that the magestic water fountain in Rua Princesa Isabel was shut off, and there were pivetes (street urchins) in it, playing inside, shooing people away aggressively with bad language and rude gestures, from it. People walked around the pivetes' lair with bowed heads, almost as if their city's beauty had been taken away from them.

I thought these Cariocas look defeated. They are vanquished and they know it. Because they feel guilty about the lads' poverty, no one says anything to them. They just take it as cement jungle punishment.

And then I saw him. An old black man wearing dark denim shorts -- more tatters than shorts. His beard was scraggly, and he was painfully, almost Holocaust thin. Suddenly, his smell hit me in full force. I felt so bad that I actually had smelt him, even though I didn't say anything out loud.

I felt guilty within my own self about my reaction.

But it wasn't body odour that I was smelling. For I suddenly looked down, and saw a huge stringy stream of poo running down one of his legs. I hadn't noticed it, because it was the same colour as his skin.

Although no pedestrian met his eyes, he was wildly gesturing at people and yelling at them in what he imagined was their reproof for the sight of him.

The three great show trials of the 20th century were Sacco & Vanzetti, Hiss, and the Rosenbergs. In all three cases the defendants were compared to Dreyfus, and many fine writers did their best work detailing the plight of those poor souls. It has been a great tragedy for American letters that in these cases the defendants were all guilty. The fine words of good writers in their defense now seem as shabby and self serving as Neruda's Ode to Stalin....There remains a great drama in those trials that has not been told. How did the defendants come to embrace their lies and how did so many well meaning people come to believe in their martyrdom? I think there was a point where Madoff passed from being a respectable financier and philanthropist to being a fraud. I wonder at all the lies he told himself to achieve that ripening into corruption. I think Hiss was to idealism what Madoff was to respectability. It was all a sham but in order to pull it off you had to walk the walk for a number of years. You had to have all the small gestures down pat in order to make the large one....I suppose Madoff's story will be told as capitalism = bad, and Hiss's story will be shelved. But really I think they are variations on the same story: a man with a few small virtues wishes to puff himself into something grand and consequential....The difference is that the financial writers will wonder how they got Madoff so wrong, and the political writers will go on to protest the injustice done to this year's Jack Abbott.

I love it when the truly ignorant have such strong opinions. Judging a movie by its trailer is bizarre. Making judgments in the absence of knowledge is really the epitome of ignorance at work. Haven't seen Frost/Nixon and don't care about it. However, I've been seeing trailers & movies for over 50 years and can't think of one trailer that ever gave me anything close to the movie experience (good or bad). Gee, don't lawyers usually want evidence?

Trailers (I prefer the term previews) are advertisements. Are you seriously suggesting that you were never put off a movie based on its preview? Unless it's your job or passion to see and review every movie, how can you live?

The word I would use to describe my loaf today is "coil" or "coiled". I like the word "coil" or "coiled". You think of a snake don't you...or a morning loaf slowly seeping out of someone's ass. It wasn't a sudden burst loaf it was a slow, methodical, coil. Or maybe like Heinz ketchup coming out of it's bottle.

Chicken asks "Are you seriously suggesting that you were never put off a movie based on its preview" Never even suggested anything of the sort. I just wouldn't condemn a film I hadn't seen based on the trailer. You're right, previews (as you prefer) are ads--nothing more--and that limited focus makes them useless in judging the entire film. When I'm "put off" watching a film because of its preview it is generally because I'm not interested in a particular genre (e.g. Zombie Slashers)not the film itself.

Life's not fair, but they seem to be decent people making good decisions. No need to hate them

I don't hate either of them. I think Angelina is a tad on the weird side and I'm reminded that she was banging Billy Bob Thorton which makes me wonder what she was smoking back then.

I thought Brad Pitt was quite good in the Oceans movies. Thought he was horrible as Achilles but then again that movie blew anyway. Honestly off the top of my head can't think of anything else I've seen him in.

Still can't figure out why he dumped Jen for Angelina. I think Jen is way better looking and has a much better body. Angelina looks too much like a largemouth bass to me.

I think because, though she can seem shallow whilst doing this, Angelina has more varied interests than Jennifer Aniston. There was more chance for growth with her, than dining nightly with David Arquette and Courtney Cox...

I think Jolie grew as a person from that Billy Bob Thornton tongue-kissing, exhibitionist sidekick she was becoming, and surprised herself by the depth of her new maturity as a mother.

I think Jen is way better looking and has a much better body. Angelina looks too much like a largemouth bass to me.

I kept staring at her mouth in "Changeling". Her lips looked like they were presented in 3-D, reaching out and taunting you with their enormity.

I actually thought the script was stale, Host, and I found myself getting up to get popcorn midway (which I never do). What held it together was Sean Penn, who continues to excite as an actor, to put it mildly. Personally, I think he was much better in this, than in "Mystic River" for which he won the Oscar.

I liked it better then "Benjamin Button" and "Frost/Nixon".

Zach told me that Benjy Button was cold. And it was. But...

I think this is "Slumdog"'s year.

...though Slumdog is a strong contender for Best Picture, the Academy love to reward films like Benjamin Button. It's got the literary bona fides of F. Scott Fitzgerald, at that.

I'll agree with the "younger and more exotic" point, Victoria. OT, someone who is not looking "younger and more exotic" on Drudge right now is Caroline K. Schlossberg. Caroline is transforming into Anne Meara before our eyes.

How many past lives do you have to do everything right in order to reach the karma where you can pass over Jennifer Anniston to go to Angelina?... I always admired Angelina for her open mouth kiss of her brother at the Oscars. It's difficult to roll out a fresh new perversion in the jaded world of Hollywood, but she made the effort. I thought celebs were as narcissistic as the Pharoahs and that the phenomenon would catch on. It turned out she was a little ahead of her time, but I do think incest will be the next big perversion. Pedophilia is so last year.

I'm sticking to my guns that the best actor in Dark Knight was Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon. It's easy to play the deranged psychopath. Playing the tired normal guy who holds his own amidst all the clowns in costumes...that takes skill.

OK, so can we assume that actors and actresses have really short memories? That's why they have to release all the Oscar pix in December and (really) January?

The Visitor was last Spring and Frozen River was last Fall, but being low-budget films with no big name stars, they would've been suffocated had they waited till December. Woody Allen's probably not expecting his movies to get Oscars at this point, at least not for him.

Changeling was released all the way back in November, doubtless to avoid conflicting with Gran Torino, but the Academy likes Eastwood as an actor about as much as it likes Gibson as an actor.

As a big fan of comedy, this is the first nomination for one of the 'big 4' acting awards that I can think of which went to a comedic performance....and I'm thrilled about that.

Kevin Kline won for A Fish Called Wanda in 1989. He deserved it. That movie was brilliant. And I say that RDjr's role in Tropic Thunder is a good match for Kline's, but it doesn't matter because Ledger will get it anyway.

I loved Tropic Thunder, but then I loved Team America: World Police, also. Tom Cruise should've been nominated for his role in TT, also. He was incredible.

1) Michael Shannon. I thought he'd be snubbed because he got no major precursors. He was one of the best things about the movie and in two and a half scenes gives a performance just as Oscar worthy as the two leads.

2) The Reader's surprise Picture and Director noms. Now there are actually two nominees that would be on my Top 5 for the year.

3) Milk got pretty much everything it was expected to get.

4) Kate Winslet getting nominated for Best Actress.

5) The Dark Knight being snubbed in the major categories. I had a feeling this would happen, and I'm glad it did.

Things I'm not happy about:

1) Kate Winslet's category mix-up. I understand why they wanted to put her in Actress for The Reader, but I just wanted to see her get double nominated. And I think there should be a way to figure out the categories first instead of risking splitting the vote.

2) Revolutionary Road snubbed all over the place. One of my favorite movies of the year. Leonardo DiCaprio, in particular, should have been nominated.

3) Benjamin Button getting way too many nominations. That movie is not nearly good enough to justify this level of praise.

A "good decision" for Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt would be to get married, legitimizing their offspring and ceasing to set a bad example (i.e., which they flout social norms and reject the responsibilities conventionally associated with "being a family").

Yes, I realize that voicing this criticism confirms that I'm hopelessly old-fashioned. Yes, I know that there are far worse examples to be found, including in Hollywood. Indeed, by Hollywood standards, they are almost scandalously responsible. But Bogard and Bacall, they ain't.

It's a new day in America, though, one in which we finally have a devoted married couple in the White House who demonstrate commitment to one another and to their children, who set an example for young couples regarding the value of marriage and married life, not just for child-rearing but otherwise ....

Oh wait. We've had such a couple in the White House since January 2001. Well, we have another one. And this one's all hip and trendy and hopey-changitudinous. So ought not that be enough of a throw-back to old-school that Brad could manage to scrape together a few bucks to buy a ring and pay a preacher (or a Justice of the Peace) to say, "I now pronounce you ..."?

He was the Viola Davis of Revolutionary Road. Mind you, she had less to work with, and probably a sum total of 8 minutes on screen. I guess you know which two supporting actors I'll be cheering for (though Heath should and will get it).

I also liked Dylan Barker in a sort of Edward Everett Horton hommage as the token waspish fairy.

I think because, though she can seem shallow whilst doing this, Angelina has more varied interests than Jennifer Aniston. There was more chance for growth with her, than dining nightly with David Arquette and Courtney Cox...

Well I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I mean, I married my wife cause I loved her and not because she was an aveneue of 'growth'.

I'm a terrible movie reviewer - I like everything. Dark Knight vs. Slumdog would have made for a more fun Oscars....

I've only seen Slumdog of this bunch, but will probably try and see the Reader and, maybe, MILK, except I'm sick of the seventies, Hollywood style. I'm reading Revolutionary Road, and like the actors in the fill, so will probably see that, too, although I like suburbia. What you put in is what you get out of suburbia, which is something the I HATE SUBURBIA movies never get. Life can be interesting if you want it to be....

For the ONE movie I did see: I dunno about narrative, or plot, or anything like that, but I loved the first scene! The children running, chased by the police, the great music mixed in with the sounds of the helicopter. The big old wide world is interesting; a trading, globalizing (hasn't it always sort of been?), mixed up, stories-you-wouldn't-believe kind of place and the first rushing scenes of SDM felt like you were seeing RIGHT NOW, er, right now.

Why don't they make films like this about the US? You totally could, you know. There are fantastic stories in this energetic, mixed up, wonderful experiment of a country.